TY - JOUR
AU - Fortin, Nicole M
AU - Oreopoulos, Philip
AU - Phipps, Shelley
TI - Leaving Boys Behind: Gender Disparities in High Academic Achievement
JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL - No. 19331
PY - 2013
Y2 - August 2013
DO - 10.3386/w19331
UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19331
L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19331.pdf
N1 - Author contact info:
Nicole Fortin
Vancouver School of Economics
University of British Columbia
#997-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T, 1Z1
Tel: 604/822-3222
E-Mail: nicole.fortin@ubc.ca
Philip Oreopoulos
Department of Economics
University of Toronto
150 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 3G7
CANADA
E-Mail: philip.oreopoulos@utoronto.ca
Shelley Phipps
Department of Economics
Dalhousie University
6214 University Avenue
Halifax, NS B3H 4R2
E-Mail: Shelley.Phipps@Dal.Ca
AB - Using three decades of data from the "Monitoring the Future" cross-sectional surveys, this paper shows that, from the 1980s to the 2000s, the mode of girls' high school GPA distribution has shifted from "B" to "A", essentially "leaving boys behind" as the mode of boys' GPA distribution stayed at "B". In a reweighted Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of achievement at each GPA level, we find that gender differences in post-secondary expectations, controlling for school ability, and as early as 8th grade are the most important factor accounting for this trend. Increases in the growing proportion of girls who aim for a post-graduate degree are sufficient to account for the increase over time in the proportion of girls earning "A's". The larger relative share of boys obtaining "C" and C+" can be accounted for by a higher frequency of school misbehavior and a higher proportion of boys aiming for a two-year college degree.
ER -